Until Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards drove onto Delery Street Sunday night, the three children had been tossing a football in front of their grandmother's FEMA trailer. Flip-flops slapping on the concrete street, they ran down Delery, toward the moving huddle of cameras topped by three big fuzzy boom microphones.

"Who is he?" they asked, pointing at Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, who calmly walked in the eye of the huddle with Tanya Harris, an activist with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Just as the light was fading, the former North Carolina senator arrived at Delery Street in the Lower 9th Ward with two vanfuls of national and foreign reporters. The lightning-quick visit to Delery, followed by a tour of the nearby Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School, were the first stops in a three-day, eight-state "Road to One America Tour" that will focus on poverty in America, one of the senator's key issues.

Edwards' tour this week is meant to echo the historic 1968 poverty tour made by then-presidential hopeful and senator Robert Kennedy. Today, Edwards begins his morning with the ABC-TV program "Good Morning America," broadcast live from the Cabildo, and will visit Kingsley House and Cafe Reconcile before he leaves for Canton, Miss. During the New Orleans leg of his tour, Edwards will focus on the sluggish pace of recovery, the need for good jobs and solid infrastructure, and ways to keep the city safe, both from hurricanes and crime.

Before the tour, he outlined a recovery plan that includes calling on the U.S. Veterans' Administration to build a new hospital downtown -- something city officials see as vital to sparking economic recovery -- and proposing a jobs program to help 50,000 Gulf Coast residents gain work skills.

This was Edwards' sixth trip to New Orleans, and seventh to Louisiana, since Katrina hit in August 2005, his campaign said. He is scheduled to return to the state Saturday for the Louisiana Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner.

Edwards' first stop was just off Delery and Tonti Street, a corner still marked by handmade street signs, red with white paint. Edwards visited the home of Gwendolyn Guice, 60, who in February moved into a new house on the lot where she'd lived for a quarter-century. Guice and her neighbor, Josephine Butler, were able to build new homes because of financing from Countryside Bank, based in California, arranged by ACORN.

An hour before the campaign blew into her block, the crickets were trilling in the shoulder-high weeds next door as Guice checked her house to make sure it was presentable. Over the couch is a photo of four generations of her family, starting with her and ending with her 3-year-old granddaughter. Before Hurricane Katrina, everyone lived within 10 minutes of here, she said. Now her family is far-flung, from Cleveland, Ohio; Fayetteville, N.C.; and New Iberia. "They're all gone," she said. "And that's a hurting thing."

The Edwardses also stopped at the FEMA trailer of Henry Phipps, 63, who hopes to move his family back there soon from the West Bank, where they're now living. "I don't know where he came from, but it was nice for him to come around," said Phipps, who owned and ran the nearby Phipps Inn before the storm. He showed the couple the work he'd completed on the brick house that he'd owned for 18 years, and then they were on their way.

Then it was quiet again on Delery Street. But it had been an exciting half-hour for three of Phipps' young neighbors: Sierra and Destiny Jones and their brother Cedric Dent. "I wish that man could get everybody back home," said Sierra, 12. "Maybe he can get everybody rebuilding their home and get that Road Home money," said Cedric, 10.

"Can he save people from another hurricane?" asked Destiny, who's 7. That's something she worries about a lot, she said, as two vans filled with journalists drove away behind her.

This report contains material from The Associated Press.
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3300.